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customer stood staring directly at her with wide, expectant eyes.
    "I haven't got all day." Her voice was sharp and she snapped her fingers in front of Julia's stunned face.
    Wow. Rude.
    "No problem." Julia forced the annoyance out of her voice. "I'm sure we can find something in here that would work."
    "Yes, I'm sure you can." The woman picked up her cell and used long polished nails to type into the keyboard.
    Julia narrowed her eyes and focused her attention on trying to find an appropriate book as quickly as possible so she could send the Wicked Witch of the West on her way. She quickly glanced at the titles on the top shelf but didn't find anything useful. She moved on to the second shelf and began checking those titles. A loud and obvious sigh of impatience came from behind her.
    Why did she have so much trouble finding a simple book? And where was a computer she could use to search the store? A store like this one must have a data system in place. She would have to find out about that before anyone else asked her to find another difficult book.
    "You do work here, right? Do I need to call your supervisor over?"
    Julia plastered on a smile as fake as the woman's breasts and hoped it passed as sincere. "Today's my first day. I'm trying to find you the book as quickly as I can." She tried to remain calm and not get flustered under the woman's glare. "Perhaps if we both look, we'll find your book faster?"
    "Perhaps you need to be kept in the back stockroom if you're too dimwitted to find a simple book."
    Julia's mouth fell open and the overwhelming desire to pluck one of the snotty woman's fake eyelashes was almost too much to ignore. She pushed down the annoyance brewing deep inside, like a kettle on the brink of boiling, and remained calm, determined not to let this woman get to her. Julia needed this job, which meant she needed to get used to putting up with divas like this on a daily basis. She may as well get used to sucking up her pride and ignoring the plastic mannequins who tried to belittle her.
    She walked her fingers along the spines of books with glossy photos of sunflowers and whatnot, desperately trying to find anything suitable to give the woman who was now gossiping loudly into her phone. She had to find a book, any book—defeat was not an option.
    Julia dived down to the lower shelves. Hidden amongst the books on perennials and planting petunias, there was bound to be a book on projects for kids, and she wasn't giving up until she found one. She had to get rid of this lady fast, before she ended up fired on her first day of work.

Chapter Four

    Chase wandered out of the mystery section on his way to the science fiction new releases. A new Dresden book had come out a few days before, and he was eager to delve into the newest escapade of Jim Butcher's unique brand of fun. Sci-fi was his favorite guilty-pleasure genre, and one he indulged in more often than he cared to admit. Reading was exactly the kind of thing he needed to help take his mind off Julia.
    He would never call himself a scholarly reader, and he was okay with that. When he was at Harvard, he'd done more than his fair share of reading books written by men too pompous for their own good. The moment he'd graduated from the university two years ago, he vowed to read only for pleasure. Since he was single with nowhere better to be, his pleasure tonight would be stretching out on the couch with a beer and a novel—not exactly everyone's idea of a good time, but to him a night in reading sounded like heaven after a long day of work.
    He glanced down the aisles as he meandered through the store. More customers lingered in the rows than he expected to see on a Tuesday afternoon. In the spring, people were generally anxious to get out of the house as soon as the weather turned warm. Today was definitely one of the nicer days the Northeast had seen so far, and customers were wandering into the store in droves for iced coffees and conversation. The store